


brittle star

by kalypsobean



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Androids, Crueltide, Gen, Murder, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 05:20:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13093242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: this is not your destruction, this is your birth





	brittle star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackOfNone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackOfNone/gifts).



> Title and summary from '[Brittle Star](https://dyssidia.bandcamp.com/track/brittle-star#lyrics)' by Dyssidia.
> 
> Please see end notes for clearer warnings, containing spoilers.

From there, she could see across the whole city, to the edge of the forest and the desert, even the sun reflecting off the top of Pascal's village. There were flyers near the camp, and stubbies two floors below. She knew all this, could see it and yet...

She remembered this exact feeling; the edge of hysteria, the thoughts becoming jumbled, the static. This was how it felt to know someone and to keep their secrets from them. This is how it looked to have learned someone so well and lost them. Everything was normal, outside, right down to the animal grunts, carried on a faint breeze. Nothing had changed, yet it felt, for her, as if the very foundation of the world had fallen away.

Where even 9S can't see, she is unsettled, alert, ready.

 

9S left, but she paused, waiting only until 9S is far enough away to not see her draw her sword; if he hears the manic laughter end too abruptly, or notices that it took her a moment to follow him out, he doesn't say.

Nevertheless, it is now that she must plan, for now he has knowledge he should not have, and the order to kill will come.

 

Of course, it wasn't enough to just kill him; she had to make sure he won't remember the things he isn't supposed to know, that he can come back at all. It's not always as simple as watching when he backs up and preventing him replacing it, or storing data elsewhere. No matter how worthy of his trust she proved, he did not tell her everything, nor could he; he might have found something when hacking a machine and not have been able to know its significance until later, when they are no longer in combat or when more information is found that illuminates a meaning previously unknowable, perhaps days or weeks later. The seeds for 9S' compromise always grew back when he did, for removing them entirely would render him useless. 

 

The first time, she did it simply; like she always had before, she stabbed him. The quick through-and-through was the primary method taught to her - for an easy and fast death, destroy the power source and sever the connection to the processors, and at a nearby access point, a new body would appear, remembering nothing of its end. 

9S proved different; he did not always back up through an access point, so she could not know what he retained. Sometimes, she thought he remembered everything. If she simply executed him, he did not even bleed; a few minutes later, she collected him from an access point, and she would receive the order again within days, as if he had restored from another backup, or taken the information from his own previous body. The simple execution was not enough.

 

The first time she'd understood this, she'd found that point herself; she'd felt adrift, lost, perhaps confused, though she did not have the words to clearly describe, even to herself, the depth of the fear that simply doing her job wasn't enough. However, leaving 9S to someone else, returning to only killing in battle, when no other option existed, was just as much not an option as allowing the fear to overcome her and then needing to be put down herself.

It fell to her to plan, to strike a balance between curious enough and too much knowledge, and to hold that line. This place, though; it is insidious, and seems designed, somehow, to lead 9S into her trap again and again.

The next time she killed him, she took her time. It was meant to overload him, to prevent him being able to network.

It turned out to be easier that way. 

 

There had been something pure about the way her sword slid into his chest, with minimal force and a slight crunching sound, and how it immediately resulted in 9S falling limply to the ground. It was effective, neat, but flawed; his chipset remained in place, his neural net intact, and she could never be sure exactly when he was properly inoperable.

There were other simple options open to her, of course, though they were just as unsure. She could remove his OS, and wait for his limbs to stop twitching. It was slower, and she risked being caught, but if she waited long enough, she could reinsert the chip, and there was no new body to explain, for he would only be missing time. If it were a situation where she needed to react quickly, that would do it; intimate, quiet, she wouldn't even need to report it to 6O, and his Pod would only recall an error. She had beheaded him once, which had not worked well, though she had been able to time how long it took for his neurons to fail without power (seventeen point three six seconds) and how long he could still move his arm (fourteen point eight three one two seconds). It was comforting to her to know these things; for it felt like she was learning 9S, and this knowledge made her both more deadly and more able to mislead him. She could estimate what kinds of pain would overload him enough to corrupt his databanks, preventing him from backing himself up or fighting her, but she could also keep him distracted, with missions and materials searches, until the unwanted data was overwritten or its priority was lowered. It was how she kept herself in control, so she did not end up like the androids she killed; she collected information, protected him from permanent decommission, and found a sense of peace in doing so.

However, this time, the pieces had been recorded over several days, and the loss of his short-term memory would not serve to conceal it. If she had realised sooner, perhaps, or not waited to execute the other android and been able to erase that memory before it was reinforced... but he had more knowledge than that, not just of assassins, but of the machines, independent and evolved, and just one piece missing was not enough to delay him from the truth. 

It would have to be dirty, and slow, and thorough.

She looked forward to it.

 

She planned for it to happen in the forest, where there were usually bipeds training in military-like drills that she could use as her cover; 9S always had trouble with so many at once, and it was easy to get caught between two groups, or fall down the cliff. She did not wish to be interrupted, though, so she kills them first, until the clearing is quiet. He secured his sword, and set to gathering usable components, as he always did.

The first step was to render his Pod offline, so that he would not be able to recover anything from its log. It was enough to have knocked it into a tree, but she powered it down to be sure it could not record; Pods were rarer than parts, after all, and it would be suspicious if 9S reset without it. He made it easy for her as he disassembled a biped for its shield and chips; he did not see her take his Pod from the air or cover it with leaves. Her own Pod watched over it, for this was personal, and she did not need assistance.

She knelt beside him, as if to help, but instead of taking the chip, she put her hand around his wrist.

"You don't need that," she said, and _twisted_ , separating his hand from the arm, though their skin was strong enough that such a break did not cause it to split. He turned his head towards her, and she smiled for him. Then she pushed him over, so his back lay on the ground, and straddled him, resting her weight on his upper legs. It was, perhaps, an intimate position, but it was also sensible, for this way he could not stand without throwing her off, and she was both stronger and built more densely; he tried, with his uninjured arm, but she caught it in her hands and pushed that down, too, until she could bend it to the grass and pull it out of the shoulder socket. She removed his visor then, too, so she could see his eyes, as they would tell her exactly when he passed. (One time she crushed his neural net in her hands, and it wasn't enough to erase the pieces from his databank, but if she waited until his eyes went flat and dark, it didn't begin repairing itself. She always watched now.)

He did try to stop her; she batted his arm away, easily for he did not have full control of it, and she needed her hands for other things. She needed them for the hole she made in his chest, with a single punch, one which, instead of neatly disconnecting his power source, shattered it, causing splinters to ricochet throughout his chest. She intended for them to shift and move as he tried to breathe, and thus he would be losing his ability to command this body as the neuro-conductive fluid leaked. Her hands, too, were be scratched, but she did not mind; the pain allowed her to concentrate as she pressed on his neck. His eyes were still blue, so she scratched at his nape until she could feel her hands losing their grip. She found the edge of his neural net, the main connector at the spine, and pulled just as his eyes went grey, and then flat. For a moment, she wished he had lasted a bit longer, enough that she could have seen how he reacted to a lighter touch, or if she'd neatly severed his spine. She could have done more; she didn't quite have that peaceful, hyperfocused state that his death generally triggered. She'd been close, in that last second, when she'd held his brain in her hands and watched him die, but it was no longer enough. 

 

She would not need to analyse the remnants of his log, or the databanks, for he had been focused on her and on the pain; she hoped it would be enough such that no trace of the E-type would remain in his memory, and he would again be without enough data with which to infer the truth. But whether it had been enough to corrupt the data further back... she would find out.

She called 6O to report, and met 9S at the camp. 

He did not ask where she had been; she began to plan her next kill.

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the prompt in the letter for exploring a character's headspace during a violent scene. In this story, rather than end up like the android in the 'Amnesia' sidequest, 2B copes with her role by finding and experimenting with different ways to execute 9S. Perhaps she even enjoys it. 
> 
> The fic mentions beheading, implies exsanguination, and specifically shows dislocating and breaking of 'bones', impaling, brain injury, excoriation, and 2B punching a hole in 9S' chest. Eyes are mentioned but not injured. It does not have a directly sexual component.


End file.
